Consoling My Piano
by Morgan Steelgrave
Summary: A little introspective piece on Relena.


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"Consoling My Piano" - A Gundam Wing Fanfic by Morgan Steelgrave   
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Here's a sketchy little thing I put together from bits of a journal   
entry of mine from a few years ago, which I thought might work as   
Relena's, too (gasp!).   
  
No warnings this time, other than perhaps a slight A/U. Just a   
thoughtful piece about the connections music can create between   
people and things. Please R&R!   
  
Disclaimer: Relena, Duo, and the others are not mine, and I doubt they   
ever will be. The original portion of this writing is MINE, so please   
be nice and respect that before posting this anywhere else.   
Thanks! ^_^   
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"Music is the space   
between the notes."   
--Claude Debussy   
  
  
At one point while taking piano lessons when I was younger, I   
considered the idea of being a concert musician. I entertained the   
notion only briefly, because I decided I enjoyed the music too much   
to subject it to the stress and bitterness I was certain would come   
if I forced the harmony into the box known as a career. Eventually,   
the enjoyment I got from letting my hands caress the keys faded,   
mostly due to a string of bad instructors who effectively managed to   
smother the passion I once had for the instrument. The war did not   
help motivate me to play, either, but by then things other than my   
fingers had stiffened with disuse. My artist's soul was forced into   
hiding behind a veil of political flags, and I nearly forgot its   
existance at all, so wrapped up was I in being what I thought I was   
supposed to be according to the world and my father.   
  
I did not play for years after that. I could remember snippets   
of Christmas carols and a very few of my first simple classical pieces.   
Most of what I had learned, however, slipped away from me over the   
course of time. I tinkered with it occasionally to work out a melody   
that was trying to dig its way out of my thoughts, but beyond that   
the keys simply sat silently, watching me draw farther away from   
beneath their hardwood cover.   
  
I had visitors who would come over and play intermittently, but   
that was different. They had repertoires; they played for the sake of   
being able to play. They would sit down and turn out Beethoven or   
Bach mechanically, without a second thought. An entire piece played   
through, they would pull the lid back down over the keys and move   
on to something else. I sometimes wondered if those keys experienced   
the twinge of *wrongness* I felt when someone else played them. I   
felt I was doing them an injustice by ignoring them, but the sense   
of betrayal only worsened when I let someone else touch them. Rather   
than remedy the uneasiness, however, I ignored it in hopes that it   
would go away. And it would for quite some time, until someone else   
would come along and play the piano.   
  
The feeling returned one night at a party I had for everyone   
a few months after the war was over. I invited only a small group,   
but each brought several friends to what resulted in a lively   
gathering where several guests were musicians and took turns at the   
piano to exhibit their talents. A group of them moved from the den   
into the music room, where they gathered around the piano and the   
stacks of sheet music placed haphazardly around it. Most would play   
a song in its entirety, whether it was Chopin or Chopsticks, then get   
up and wander over to the hors d'oeuvres. I did not go into the   
music room, mostly because I did not want to chance being asked to   
play something. I had always hated playing the piano in front of   
other people, even when I could remember how to play. What happened   
between me and the instrument was private, because playing was so   
much a part of me. I played when the spirit moved me, for lack of   
a better term, and I was not fond of putting that particular part of   
me on display. The fact that my piano and I were not on speaking   
terms did not add to my motivation to perform, either.   
  
It was not long before Duo was requested to play a piece, and   
though he was reluctant at first, he eventually seated himself at   
the piano and began to play. The notes that came from the instrument   
were not the polished and distilled music of a performance, but   
sketchy ones, skipping from an improvised snippet of ragtime, to a   
section of Pachelbel, to a bridge from Billy Joel. The ivory   
yielded to his touch, hesitant at first, but increasingly confident   
in the fragments of the music he played. He did not care if what   
he played was technically perfect; he played even the mistakes from   
his heart. He talked to the others in the room and to himself,   
puzzling through difficult spots in the songs that he could not   
quite remember, thrilled when he recalled the sequence of the chords.   
  
As the minutes wore into hours, guests called out their   
goodbyes and our numbers dwindled, but Duo continued to persuade the   
keys to croon their notes. I finally came in and stood by the piano,   
watching him play. He smiled at me as he tried to coax an elusive   
melody from the sheet music he had placed in front of him.   
  
"You play very well," I said, leaning against the piano.   
Noticing how he was stuggling to make out the notes, I placed a hand   
on his shoulder and reached over him, switching on the brass lamp to   
illuminate his work. "That might help."   
  
"Thanks," he grinned sheepishly. "I guess I get caught up in   
the music and common sense takes a detour. No, that's not right...ah,   
there it is," he turned his attention to the keys, revisiting a   
jangling chord progression until he got it correct. He glanced up   
from the keyboard and around the room, at the windows with late, dark   
voids behind their panes. "I used to love to play the piano at night.   
I would get home late from school, probably because I was fighting or   
had detention or something, and I always needed to wind down. Sister   
Helen insisted I needed my sleep because I was just a kid, but Father   
Maxwell knew I needed time to myself more than I needed rest."   
  
"Father Maxwell?" I knew Duo was an orphan and that he had   
grown up in a church, but I had never learned the details of his   
childhood.   
  
"He ran the church that took me in," Duo explained. "He was a   
good man. I was a troubled kid, if you can imagine that, and because   
I never knew my parents Father Maxwell felt it was that much more   
important that I figure out what kind of person I wanted to be.   
Playing the piano was just an incidental thing, really. It would   
help me re-center myself, even when I was little. It was one of the   
few things I was good at that didn't get me into trouble."   
  
"How did you ever manage to keep up with it all these years?"   
I asked, amazed. It was not that Duo knew how to play the piano that   
surprised me, but the fact that he had stuck with it for so long,   
even though the war. The pilot was a ball of energy and I suppose   
I had never thought of him as having much of an attention span.   
  
"I could always sneak in a little time between my missions,"   
he said lightly, "I was usually sent to one school or another as part   
of my cover, so I made certain to take advantage of the practice   
rooms, if they had them." Duo slowed his hands, lingering on the   
chords as he added, "I've been so busy lately, though. I hardly ever   
get to play anymore." Before I could reply, he shrugged away his   
quiet reflection and picked up the tempo, launching into a rousing   
rendition of "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da." Playing was a personal thing for   
him, much as it was for me when I played, and the significance of   
the fact that he felt comfortable enough to sit and simply play for   
hours with us around him was not lost on me. He called for everyone   
in the room to come join in singing as he pounded the keys happily,   
lending his voice to the crowd's. And I noticed that when he laughed,   
the piano laughed, too.   
  
I was not exactly sure when everyone left. They said they were   
leaving several times; the first was about midnight or so. The last   
came at two in the morning when, tired and laughing, they departed   
ready to go home but glad they had come. Over the next few days I let   
aching muscles and tired brain cells recover from the stresses I had   
put them through the previous few months. I missed the people and   
the time spent working with them already, though I was glad for a   
chance to catch up on simple chores and errands that had slipped by   
undone during my first few months as Vice Foreign Minister. Yet   
something nagged at me, something other than simply missing the once   
constant company of my friends. It was present when I tried to sleep   
late in the mornings, forcing my eyes open as I lay in bed. It was   
there when I was up reading at two in the morning, keeping my mind   
from focusing on the printed words in front of me.   
  
It was the silence. The house, which had been full of activity   
less than a week before, was utterly silent. As I wandered around the   
rooms, trying to figure out how I could remedy the distraction, I found   
myself drawn to the music room. No one was seated at the piano, which   
still had the sheet music stacked all over it, the bench pulled out   
where Duo had been tinkering with it before he left. I knew then that   
it was not the voices I missed, but the music. I was not lonely, but   
empty. So was my piano.   
  
There is an idea rooted in Eastern philosophy, a belief that to   
squeeze every drop of essence from life one must stop and appreciate   
even its seemingly bare moments. I have always believed in the concept,   
that *nothing* could be *something*, but before that moment I had never   
experienced the nudge that those instances of life's negative space can   
give a person. It brought me back to my estranged love of music, and   
I thanked it for that as I smiled at my piano, lifted the hardwood lid,   
and began to play. I sat there for hours, playing what came to me. It   
was halting and scattered, and I rarely muddled through a song without   
having to pause and retrace a wrong chord or untangle my rusty fingers,   
but it was enough to fill the silence--until I needed it again, anyway.   
  
- FIN - 


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